


After

by NightOwl14



Category: Supernatural RPF
Genre: Afterlife, Character Death, Fantasy, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-09-11
Updated: 2014-12-03
Packaged: 2018-02-17 00:40:11
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 11
Words: 11,613
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2290628
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NightOwl14/pseuds/NightOwl14
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jensen Ackles has just died but his journey into the light is turning out a to be a bit different from what he expected. He is introduced to an entirely new world filled with ornate palaces and free of things like pestilence and war.</p><p>Jared Padalecki, on the other hand, has been dead for a year, and what a torturous year it’s been. He is finally coming to terms with the fact that he will spend eternity paying for a mistake he made when he meets a boy from the other side of the gate that separates the light from the flames and the graced from the damned.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> So I've written science fic and a real world fic so I'm going to try a fantasy fic. There is a lot of character death but the fic takes place in the afterlife.
> 
> I hope you enjoy reading it, I appreciate anyone who takes the time to read my work and I especially appreciate those who leave kudos or comment. Hearing people praise or even criticize my fic drives me to want to write more of it. So please please please comment.
> 
> Thanks a bunch!

_Jensen_

She said it was the head wound that did me in.

There were plenty of abrasions, a tooth knocked out, along with some other sundry injuries. But when I tripped and was caught by a flight of concrete steps it was the cracking open of my head that killed me. Though it took sixteen hours to do it.

She said this and she took a sip of her coffee.

It’s strange to hear her talk about my body as though she knows it better than I do.

“It was a near thing,” she gestures at me with her mug, “You might’ve lived if you’d held on a bit longer.”

“Is that supposed to make me feel better?” I squirm uncomfortably in my black suit. It’s a size too small, itchy, and far fancier than anything I’d ever put on. Not to mention it’s still damp, still dripping crystal water onto the white marble floor.

From what I’ve gathered, this suit is what they buried me in.

It’s what I woke up in, anyway: This suit and a coffin that was six feet underground.

My nails are still crusted with blood from my hysteric attempts to dig my way out, though any scrapes I obtained seem to have healed.

“It’s not supposed to _do_ anything. I just thought I’d mention it.” She appears completely unruffled by my anger. But I suppose the Grimm Reaper, or whoever she is, deals with anger quite often.

“You just thought you’d _mention_ that I wasn’t strong enough to live?”

“Jensen,” finally she puts the coffee down, “You didn’t die because you weren’t strong enough to live. You died because you didn’t want life badly enough.”

My eyes get sort of watery and it blurs together all the different shades of white that make up this large room. I blink quickly to get rid of the wetness and try to refocus my attention.

I try to remember what happened, but I can’t. The last memory I have of the living world is sitting in my last class of the day and tapping my fingers against the edge of my desk. I remember the smell of textbook pages and the lulling monotone of my teacher’s voice.

 I don’t remember leaving the class. Nor do I remember walking down the stairs and overstepping so far that all my foot found was air.

What a lame fucking way to go out.

“So this is… _Heaven_ ,” I blow out a puff of air, “Well, it’s certainly fancy.”

Fancy is an understatement. It’s ostentatious. The large rooms with golden finishing seem suited for royalty. The only part of the castle that isn’t pristine and made of expensive materials is the part I entered into, but even the cavern was beautiful with its coal walls and it’s small pond. 

See, a few minutes into screaming and digging my nails into the top of my coffin, the world started to shake. It had seemed like an earthquake until I noticed that the bottom of my coffin was crumbling. The earth beneath me was sucking me into it like quicksand.

I scratched at the top of the coffin, this time trying to find something to hold onto, but I wasn’t strong enough. I got the feeling that not even the strongest man alive would’ve been strong enough to avoid being sucked downward.

For a brief moment, there was no oxygen. Everything around me was black dirt. I felt like I was trapped in an hourglass, breathing in the sand surrounding me.

Then I was falling through the air.

I landed into the small pond with a splash. My suit, along with my shock, made it difficult to swim to the surface, but I managed it.

The pond was inside of a vast cave. A dome of rock surrounded me. I looked up, expecting to find the hole in the ceiling, from which I fell through, but there was nothing but solid stone and my brow crinkled in confusion.

The other thing that seemed strange was that I could see at all. There was no way for sunlight to enter the cavern, and there were no lamps or flashlights. It took a few moments to realize that the pond was emitting the light. The water was literally glowing.

“Jensen Ackles?” A voice asked. The acoustics in the cave bounced my name around like a Ping-Pong ball.

I turned in a circle, my limbs thrashing, until I caught sight of a young woman standing at the edge of the pond, where the stone met the crystal clear water that I was submerged in. Her dress was knee length and the color of newly fallen snow.

“Who the fuck are you?” My question was followed by a series of coughs, as the dirt I’d swallowed exited my lungs.

“My name is Samantha Ferris. I’m here to welcome you to The After.”

She helped me out of the pond before leading me up a set of stairs. As I climbed, the rough cave walls turned into the flat white ones. Before long we were no longer in a cave, but in a palace.

I’m dragged away from my thoughts by the sound of Samantha Ferris laughing. Throwing back her head, her ringlets of brown hair bouncing. After she composes herself she apologizes. “It’s just so silly,” she explains, “how much the living think that they know.”

I blink at her and she lets out another laugh.

“The isn’t _Heaven_. I am not God or the Fourth Horseman or the Grimm Reaper. I’m nothing more than an usher.”

“And you’re here to usher me into what?”

Her crimson lips curled slightly. “Into the light, or course.” She clears her throat, as if to make an important announcement. “I’m here to introduce you to the Kingdom of Light.”

I’d thought all my doubt about actually being dead had faded away by now. After spending about a half hour in this beautiful, surreal world, I’d thought that I’d accepted that it was real. This was no joke. This was no dream.

But something about hearing those words jars me. They sound so dreamlike and unreal that make me want to run back down the many steps that brought me hear and dive headfirst into the glowing pond, in the hopes that it will awaken me and I will be in my bed, or, at the very least, in a hospital bed.

“Jensen,” she says, leaning forward. She reaches out and takes one of my hands in both of hers. Her nails are not manicured, but they are perfect. None are broken. None are bitten. I find myself fascinated by them. “You should be grateful.” There is no room for argument in her tone. “Not everyone is lucky enough to end up here.”


	2. Chapter 2

_Jared_

The song on the radio was one that I knew well enough to sing along to. But I can’t remember what song it was.

It feels wrong that I can’t remember. I should remember everything about that evening: the song on the radio, the red digits on the clock, the silhouette of the moon behind the clouds.

But I do remember singing, and I remember the droplets of water beginning to tap my windshield.

I was driving a road I knew well, one less than five miles from my home. Navigating it was something I could do in my sleep, and that was how I rationalized it when I heard the buzzing of my phone and pulled it out to see who’d texted.

I didn’t go off of the road. I didn’t so much as swerve.

But I also didn’t see the child dash out in front of my car. At least, I didn’t see her until she bounced off the hood of it.

I slammed down on the breaks and I felt the car go up and then back down before it stopped. As though I’d hit a speed bump.

But I hadn’t hit a speed bump; I’d hit a child.

I don’t know what she’d been doing in the road, if she was chasing a ball or running away. To this day I have no idea.

I sat there with my foot still pressing down the brake in a car that wasn’t moving. I sat there and felt my asthma kicking in, as my breaths shortened. I sat there and did everything I could not to look back at the body of the girl I’d just run over.

Then I saw a flash of headlights from behind me and before I could think, my foot moved to the right and slammed on the gas.

There was a chance that if I went to help the girl I wouldn’t go to jail. That if I called the police, they would declare that the accident wasn’t my fault. But I felt like they’d take one look at me and know that I’d been on my phone, and that I’d killed a child because of it.

It was dark out. I’d been on a back road. I was almost certain that no one had seen me. Of course, that didn’t stop the paranoia that at this very moment the owner of the headlights I had caught a glimpse of was dialing the police and giving them my license plate number.

When I got home the first thing I did was hose off the front of my car. There was no dent: just some blood and bit of matted hair.

She’d been blonde.

This observation was confirmed the next day when news of Alona Tal’s death seemed to be everywhere: the television, the newspaper. I did my best not to look at any of it, but once, a day or two later, I walked in on my mom watching the news. Alona Tal’s mother was on the screen, her small shoulders quaking as she spoke of her four-year-old daughter.

A hit and run.

I lived every day thinking that it would be the day they came for me. The police would show up on my doorstep and leave with me in handcuffs. I would be branded: Jared Padalecki, the murderer. In my seventeen years, I had never felt like more of a child then in those few days.

Nightmares plagued me. They made me afraid to close my eyes, no matter how tired I was. I’d wake up sweaty and short of breath. Until the night when I didn’t wake up. Not in bed, anyway.

I woke up in a box, a coffin, with no light to let me see my surroundings. I screamed as the ground sucked me into it like it was inhaling me.

Then it dropped into thick hot air and I landed on a pile of sharp rocks that left my back bloody and scraped.

When I managed to sit up I saw a woman standing over me. She might have been pretty, if not for the fact that her face was missing all it’s skin. Muscles clung to her skull and she had only one eye. Her brown hair was singed at the ends and all different lengths.

“My name is Genevieve Cortese,” she said, “Welcome to The After. Welcome to the Kingdom of Fire.”

That was a year ago, that I died in my sleep of an asthma attack and woke up in another world. Or at least, it was year in The After. No one really knows if time works differently on earth or not.

In the beginning I thought it wasn’t fair. I used to scream and cry and pound at the walls. I couldn’t accept that one moment of my life had determined my eternity. This sorry excuse for a Kingdom, built of coal and bones and flames, couldn’t be where I would spend forever.

On the days when I was feeling particularly torturous I would make the long journey to the fence and get as close to it as I could without worrying the guards on the other side of it. I would stare out into the Kingdom of Light in envy.

Their marble castles to our granite cells.

Their endless feats to our empty stomachs.

Their ability to heal immediately to our curse of being permanently damaged.

The place where I live is barley bigger than the coffin I woke up in.

I have not so much as seen food or drink since I died.

I have had the same scrapes on my knuckles for the entire year I’ve been here, since I punched the wall in anger on my very first day.

There are days when I stare at the indestructible gate, with its iron bars both reaching into the clouds and digging into the center of the earth, and I will it to open. I imagine the damned pouring into the light, to live amongst the graced.

But then there are days when I think of Alona Tal and her blonde hair that I hosed off of my car. I think of her in the Kingdom of Light dancing to an unfamiliar tune and eating rows of decadent desserts. I think of her mother crying on television.

And I feel as though I’m right where I belong.


	3. Chapter 3

_Jensen_

The knock on my door is not surprising; I’ve been waiting anxiously for it for quite some time now, ever since Samantha told me what to expect.

When I open the door, a man in a suit greets me. I feel underdressed in the white shirt and pants that Samantha provided me with before she dropped me off in this waiting room. The fabric is so light that I feel as though I’m not wearing anything.

“Jensen Ackles?” He asks. His eyes are the blue of the pond that I landed in.

“That’s me.”

I step out of the room and we begin to walk side by side down a long hallway.

“Are you ready for your Welcoming Feast, Jensen?” I open my mouth to answer but he just goes on. “Not that it’s really _yours_ specifically. The Welcoming Feast is to celebrate all of the new souls that have joined us today. There are actually several taking place all over the Kingdom in order to accommodate—”

“How many new souls can there be?” My stomach churns. I hadn’t expected The Welcoming Feast to be just for me but he made it sound like there were going to be crowds of people all getting initiated or whatever they called it, _welcomed_.

“About 150,000.” He must see my mouth drop open, “Not all at this feast, there will only be a few thousand people here. Like I said, there are many feasts taking place. Oh God, I’m rambling, aren’t I? Sorry, I tend to do that, especially with newbies. I’m Misha, by the way.”

He pauses and holds out his hand. We shake and I notice, for the first time, that the tiny scar that used to be on my hand, from when I nicked myself with a knife years ago, is gone. As are all of my moles, zits—basically any imperfection that might’ve marred my skin is nowhere to be found.

I pull my hand away and ask, “Are there more caves and ponds, as well?”

“More than I can count. The Kingdoms are endless.” There is no wonder or amazement in his voice. This is just the way things are. I think of a time when I will find infinity to be anything other than astounding and I just can’t imagine it.

Eventually, we enter into a hallway that’s flowing with other people. The crowd is shuffled through double doors and into a room filled with long tables that have already been stacked with different types of food. Chandeliers adorn the ceiling but they aren’t plugged into anything as far as I can tell, and men and women, all about my age, take seats in front of plates that have already been set up.

Misha and I take seats amongst the chaos. The bustling boisterous room is enough to distract me, until I see an elderly woman, struggling through the crowd. Her grey hair is styled perfectly and her skin is free of wrinkles, but she is unmistakably older and frailer than everyone else in the room.

I tug on Misha’s suit sleeve to catch his attention. “Is she just doomed to old for all eternity?”

Misha’s eyes find the woman I’m referring to and he frowns. “Of course not, Jensen. She is the age she chose to be. She wants to be elderly.”

“But why?”

“I have no idea. Not everyone wants the same thing, Jensen. Some people want to infants or children. Some people want to be elderly. Some people even want to keep the scars they obtained in life. Sure, most want to be about our age and free of all injuries, but not everyone. And far be it from you or I to judge them for it.” The last words feel a little like a warning.

“How does anyone know what they want? I mean, no one asked me. I didn’t get to chose anything.”

Misha smiles. “Magic, of course.”

Right. Of course. _Magic_.

The sun will rise. The sun will set. And magic.

These seem to be the three constants of The After so far.

It’s about ten more minutes before everyone settles down, during which I continue to take in the room and the people around me. Misha was right. There are people of all different shape and sizes. Most are my age and flawless, but one woman is missing an arm and another holds an infant child.

Something else I notice is that two doves are flying around the room. They seem to be playing with each other: twirling and darting through the empty air. The sight of animals is astounding. It would seem that The After is not only for everyone, but also, everything.

A voice much louder than all the voices in the room put together clears its throat and silence overtakes the room.

It’s only now that everyone is seated, that I can see the man standing on a round platform in the center of the large room. He is holding a microphone up to his mouth.

“Before you get the wrong idea,” he says. He, it appears, has chosen to be older. His hair is white and there isn’t much of it on his head. “I am not God.” The crowd shares an uneasy laugh. “My name is Kurt Fuller and there are two things I wish to do tonight. The first is to welcome you to the Kingdom of Light. This is as close to a paradise as a world can be. There are no wars. There is no disease. But there _are_ rules, which brings me to my second task of this evening: Explaining them.”

The crowd seems displeased by his announcement. Apparently rules are not included in their idea of paradise.

“Now, now, calm down. There aren’t many, only two. The first rule forbids the un-accidental and uninvited harm of other souls. Though we are immortal and cannot feel pain, it is still forbidden.

“I understand that some of the gentlemen enjoy recreational fighting, which is fine. But intentional and violent acts against another soul will result in punishment. Repeated attempts might even land you on the other side of the fence.

“That is rule number two: the fence. A heavily guarded gate between the Kingdoms. As I’m sure you’re aware, there are people on earth who do not deserve paradise. Those people enter into the Kingdom of Fire upon their deaths. A gate separates us from them.”

This too causes a stir in the sea of people surrounding Kurt Fuller. The Kingdom of Fire sounds a lot like Hell to me.

“The gate only works one way, souls from the Kingdom of Light can pass through it but cannot return. This is the most important bit, so if you take one thing away from tonight, have it be this: The gate can be opened, but it never will be. Nor should it.

“I will not explain how to open the gate, nor should you attempt to find out. Were it to open, our paradise would be flooded with rapists and murders as well as a variety of other darkened souls.

“For this reason, anyone attempting to open the gate will be forced through it into the Kingdom of Fire. We cannot risk someone corrupting our paradise.

“Thank you. Enjoy your feast.”


	4. Chapter 4

_Jared_

Someone is being booted out today.

Not out of the Kingdom of Fire, of course. That’s ridiculous. People would pay to be booted out of here. But it seems the Kingdom of Light is sending someone over to join us, as they sometimes do.

I sit a little ways away and watch quietly. The scrapes on my back from when I first crashed into this world itch as though they might be healing—but after all this time I know better, know that they will always be there—and I scratch at them absently. The ones I can reach, anyway.

I’m not alone. A small crowd has joined to watch the teenage-looking boy with the sandy hair get pushed through one of the black gate’s various entrances.

Fresh meat.

I wish I could say that was purely a joke and that there weren’t souls who had tried to devour other souls out of sheer hunger. I wish.

Not that it really worked. I mean, yes, you could chop off someone’s arm and eat it, but you wouldn’t be any less hungry afterwards. And I’d thought my stomach was a bottomless pit when I was _alive_.

The boy is pleading. They often do.

I didn’t do it.

I didn’t mean it.

I’m so sorry.

And I’m sure that they are sorry… _now_.

An older man with white hair and a thick accent reads out the boy’s crime. His name is Jacob Able and, apparently, he kidnapped the soul of a young girl and kept her hidden away for months while he tortured and raped her.

You’d think that the God or the Creator or whoever sorts us into these little categories—the good and the bad—would be omnipotent. That he would be able to peer into people’s souls and see where they truly belong, not just look at their actions from when they were alive. The problem with a marking us for all eternity is that people change.

They go from law-abiding citizens to rapists.

They go from hit and run drivers to repentant seventeen year olds.

The guards are the only ones in the Light to have weapons, or so I’m told. Each of them is given a long, sharp, silver blade to help subdue the more resistant souls. The gate opens with a creaking of metal and the boy is shoved through.

Nothing spectacular happens the moment he enters the Kingdom of Fire. He simply stumbles forward and collapses on the hot, red, dirt. I’ve gotten used to the heat here, but it must feel so strange to him. Like swimming through a thick hot stew.

The moment he hits the ground he scrambles to his feet and tries to dash through the gate before it closes behind him.

People scream at him in warning.

Don’t

Stop.

He doesn’t know. He thinks it’s as easy as crossing through the gate. He doesn’t know what happens, what will always happen, unless someone from the Light finds a way to permanently open the gate.

We are not called the Kingdom of Fire for nothing.

The second Jacob Abel crosses through the gate he burns up. It is almost instantaneous, when he goes from flesh to ashes in a fiery display. It happens before he can even touch the grass that blankets the ground of the Kingdom of Light.

His ashes fall to the ground, where they will stay until the shoes of another banished soul kick them away, as there is no wind in the Kingdom of Fire. That would lessen the heat, lessen the suffering.

The man with the white hair shakes his head solemnly and then climbs atop a white horse to make the journey back to the Kingdom. The guards return to patrolling their individual sectors. The small crowd that has gathered here scatters.

Slowly they walk or crawl away. Some lie down on their backs and close their eyes, waiting for sleep to lull them into a dream world. But everyone knows that there is no sleep in The After.

With the guards’ attention no longer drawn to my Kingdom I scoot forward and slowly begin to crawl towards the gate. Two of the guards are still here, but they’re talking.

In all my time here, I have never once touched the gate. The guards have always stopped me before I could, jabbing their silver blades at me in warning. But I’ve thought about it. I’ve thought about wrapping my fingers around the cool iron and pressing my forehead against it. Even pressing my tongue to it to see if any droplets of moisture cling to the rungs.

I pull myself forward, the sand staining my already disgusting shirt and burning my knees where there are holes in my jeans. Some souls on this side of the fence have given up on clothes altogether and resorted to complete nudity.

I’ve not reached that stage of desolation just yet. I could see how it could happen, though.

The bar is just out of reach and I do my best not to make a sound. I’m so close that I can’t decide whether to keep crawling or just dash for it.

Some of the souls from my side look on, but they don’t say anything. They don’t call out to stop me or to alert the guards. They probably think I’m just another idiot, trying to cross through the fence. Finally, I’m there.

I reach out and wrap my hand around the cool iron.

Except that it isn’t cool at all and I screech involuntarily and almost inhumanely as I yank my hand away. A giant red scorch mark now covers my palm, with my flesh forming bubbles in some places.

“Hey!” A guard calls, and then he spits at me.

The spit lands just inches away and I dash toward the wetness, but it fizzles away in the heat, evaporating into gas, before I can so much as touch it.

I have never felt thirstier in my entire existence. If souls could cry in the Kingdom of Fire then I would be crying right now.

The guard throws his head back and laughs.


	5. Chapter 5

_Jensen_

“This is the library,” Misha says with a hint of a smirk, as though he knows it’s impossible for me to be unimpressed by the cathedral-like building whose top is swallowed up by the clouds.

The inside is just as magnificent, and it’s easily my favorite stop on the tour, so far. Books line the round walls. Rows upon rows of them. As many as have ever been written, Misha informs me.

He said something similar about the art museum we visited, but I’ve never found paintings or sculptures to be as influential or as interesting as words.

I think I would want to work here, as a librarian or something, if I’m allowed.

My words must’ve been spoken aloud, because Misha laughs. “You don’t _have_ to work anywhere, you know. Samantha Ferris, Kurt Fuller, me, we’re all volunteers. Jobs in The After are completely optional. Some people don’t even take part in society at all. They live far away in the outer-lands.”

“Why?”

“Because they want to. Just as I want to give back, so I give tours to newbies. This is paradise, Jensen. You can do practically anything here.”

I think of spending days reading all of these books, curling up on a soft white couch in front of a crackling fireplace and watching the words weave stories out of ink. For a moment, I think, absurdly, that I’ll never have the time to read all these books. But I do have the time. I have eternity.

An eternity without the need to sleep or use the bathroom or even eat, if I don’t want to.

But I feel almost guilty at the thought of spending all my days in leisure and not giving back in any way whatsoever. It seems almost wasteful.

“Alright, Jensen, we only have one more stop left, and then I promise I’ll leave you to your books, alright.”

We walk back outside and mount our horses. The ride is rather long; in fact, it’s almost an hour before the large gate with the black bars comes into view.

It towers over us ominously, and I can’t help but stare at it, even as I dismount my horse.

“Guard Morgan,” Misha nods to a gruff man in a black uniform. A silver blade is in a pouch attached to his belt, I can see the sliver of exposed metal glinting in the sunlight.

“Misha, always a pleasure.” The two shake hands, before Morgan turns to me, “And who do we have here?”

Mish is about to tell him but I cut him off, tired of having people speak for me. “Jensen Ackles, Sir.” I’m not certain whether I should salute him or not, but an answer is given when he holds out a hand for me to shake.

“My name is Jeffery Morgan, I’m a Guard of the Gate.”

My eyes are once again drawn to the massive structure, and what’s beyond it. It is shaped like a kingdom, like maybe it was one long ago. Before the sun came and scorched the earth and turned the stones that made up the castle black. Before a twister trampled over the earth and tore the structure apart.

Now it looks like a sandcastle that the ocean hasn’t quite finished swallowing.

On a sea of red sand lie the burnt and blackened ruins of a palace.

If I squint, I can see tiny specks moving in the distance, which I assume must be people. They move slowly, languidly. They remind me of flowers that weren’t watered so they shriveled up.

I don’t notice Misha coming up behind me until I feel his hand on my shoulder. “The Kingdom of Fire,” he tells me, “A treacherous place, but those who reside in it do so deservingly.”

“Is that what would happen to our kingdom, if the gate were to be opened, opened all the way, I mean, so that the damned could cross through.” The thought seems so very frightening, and the far away Kingdom of Fire seems a lot closer than it looks.

“No one knows,” Misha says, shaking his head, “Even if it didn’t, who would want to share a kingdom with an army of rapists and murderers.”

And suddenly it clicks: the way I could give back. I’m no good with people. I’m not friendly. I’m not funny. I can’t give tours and I can’t be an usher. But I could be a guard. I could help make certain that the Kingdom of Light stays pure.

A small keening sound comes from other side of the fence and I look down to see a woman, or what’s left of one, crawling through the scorched earth. Insects are eating at the few scraps of skin left on her bones and it seems she’s long since given up on swatting them away.

She digs her boney hands into the red dirt and pulls herself forward, pushing with her feet. She’s naked, but she’s mostly just a skeleton with some bloody red skin keeping its grip on her, so there isn’t much to cover. With every push forward, the friction of the sand rips of another layer of her skin away.

Her eyes are black sockets.

_She looks like a zombie._

As she nears the gate, Jeffrey begins to shout at her, warning her away. He pulls out his silver blade so she can see what will happen if she gets too close. But I don’t think she’s human enough to care.

_She’s more like a creature than a person._

When she gets close enough she reaches her hand out, trying to squeeze it through the metal bars that separate us from her. But Jeffrey chops it off before she can.

_She is every monster I thought hid under my bed when I was a child._

She screeches before turning away and beginning to crawl, back toward her Kingdom, one-handed.

The skeletal hand that she lost still sits beside the iron fence, but Jeffrey assures me that it will disintegrate in a few hours.

_And she deserves it._


	6. Chapter 6

_Jared_

A cluster of damned souls is crowding around a crow that flew too close to them. They’ve ripped off its wings and are taking bites out of its raw flesh, feathers sticking out of their undead mouths, as they push each other and fight over who gets to eat the bird.

You’d think they would’ve figured out by now that no matter how many insects they cram down their throats, they would always be hungry.

I give a brief nod to Colin when I get back to my tiny room, more like a closet, that sits on the two-hundredth and thirty-fourth floor of the palace. He’s younger than most of the souls around here, most kids that die get one way tickets into the Light. But Colin drowned his baby sister in a bathtub when he was six because she wouldn’t stop crying.

It’s awful, I know. But he was only six.

And really, who am I to judge. I killed a girl at seventeen and didn’t have enough integrity to fess up.

“Did you touch it?” Colin asks, his brown eyes wide. I’d told him about my intention to touch to gate before I left. Now I wish I hadn’t. I’m half tempted to lie and say the gate was wet, but then he might try to touch it himself.

“It burned me,” I say, showing him my hand and the bubbling skin that looks even worse than it did, because of my inability to stop picking at it.

Something in him sort of flickers out.

“Well maybe it’s just—“

“Colin.”

“I’m just saying, you’ve been here longer than I have, so maybe—“

“It would burn you too, Colin, there’s no reason it wouldn’t.” My voice is harsher than I intended for it to be, but I don’t want him getting a scorch mark to match mine, just because he was too stubborn and I wasn’t firm enough.

I first met Colin six months ago, a week after his arrival. He lived in the cell next to mine and when I walked past one day I noticed he was crying—or, crying as much as one can without tears. It was more like choking mewls.

I opened the door to check on him, only to find him spitting up the glass he’d tried to eat. Glass that he had broken off of one of the cracked mirrors that lined the crumbling palace walls.

After I’d finished plucking the shards out of the roof of his mouth he explained that he thought, if he cut his mouth open, he could drink the blood. But he didn’t bleed. Souls in The After didn’t bleed, in either Kingdom. But in the Kingdom of Fire, they didn’t heal either.

Since then, he’s sort of been like a little brother to me. At first it sort of freaked me out that he murdered his sister, but what can I say, the kid was sorry. And I kind of related.

“This can’t just be _it_ ,” he mutters, sullenly, “not for forever.”

“You’re preaching to the choir, kid.”

I sit down next to him and we watch the sun through the large holes in the wall, which used to be windows.

“It doesn’t have to be it, though. Someone from the Light might open the gate, so that we can get through it.”

Whoever said false hope never hurt anyone, doesn’t know what it is.

“Colin, they won’t open the gate.”

“But—“

“They’re told not to.”

“I know, but—“

“They don’t even know how. It’s not going to happen. We’re here and they’re there and that’s that.”

His eyes fill with a sadness that would be tears if it could. He climbs to his feet and shouts at me, “I’m sorry. I killed her and I’m sorry. But I didn’t know, and I didn’t understand what I was doing. I just wanted her to stop crying. Just for a little while. And it’s not fair that I’m trapped here forever because of one mistake that I didn’t know better than to make.”

He both sounds and looks like me. With his shaggy brown hair and his passionate eyes. As he stalks away, all I can think is that I hope he never loses the fire he has. How ironic, that this, The Kingdom of Flames, may be the one place desolate enough to stamp out his spark.

I want to call after him and tell him that he’s right. That there is a chance, as small as it may be. But in the two million years of the human existence, the gate has never opened.

I have seen souls try to blow it up, tear it down, and dig under it.

Even the idea that a soul from the Light could unlock the gate is hearsay. A rumor passed around by sandpaper mouths and clung on to with all the might of our dried up hands.

A few cells down from mine, a woman climbs up into one of the holes in the wall and jumps before I can even process the fact that she’s there. I rush over to the hole directly in front of me and peer down at her.

I hear no sound as she hits the sand. But I can see how contorted her body is. It’s flattened. Squished like and insect that’s been stepped on. She must’ve been new here, to think that suicide was a plausible way out of the Flames.

Her entire body shakes but she makes no sound, and all her limbs must’ve snapped, so she probably can’t sit up either, let alone, walk.

In the beginning, I might’ve helped her. I might’ve run to see if there was anything I could do, but now I tell myself that I’m powerless. Or that this is what we deserve.

But it isn’t, is it? It can’t be. No one deserves this.

I look out at the gate, that is a permanent fixture on the horizon, and I decide then and there that I will turn to ashes trying to cross through it, before I turn into a skeleton sitting idly by.


	7. Chapter 7

_Jensen_

It’s been about a week in training. It’s hard for me to tell exactly how long, because there aren’t any nights in The After. There’s no need for them when there’s no need for sleep.

When I expressed my desire to be a guard, Misha turned to me and said, “You better be damn sure about that.”

A week later, and I know what he meant. We run for miles at a time. We lift things that weigh almost as much as we do. It feels like we’re training to be soldiers in a war, rather than guards to an eternally closed gate.

Today we’ve started weapons training. We are each given our very own badass silver blades, and holsters in which to keep them. It makes the ache in my muscles from this past week’s work seem worth it.

There are ten other guards in my class so it’s not any sort of statistical anomaly when I get called to fight in the first round. But it is damned unnerving.

I feel like a child, stepping on to the fighting platform with the unfamiliar weight of a sword in my hand. A child dressed like a grown up.  

I can tell the other guy—Mark, I think his name was—is equally unnerved, and I think back to Kurt Fuller’s words when he addressed all the trainees on the first day.

_This world is a paradise for most, but not for the guards. If you want to back out at any point, we will understand. You will not be mocked or criticized. If you chose to stay, and you make it through training, you will be treated with the utmost respect. You will be a hero._

Not one single person has backed out yet.

Mark and I brace ourselves, as our overseer begins to count down from ten in his gravely voice.

“No hard feelings?” Mark says, half smiling, as we get closer to zero.

I nod, but I can’t find it in me to speak. All I can see the sharpness of the blade in his hand and all I can think about is how easily it would slide across my skin, giver how sharp it is.

“Two…One…Begin.”

Mark lunges toward me without hesitation and I step to the side, avoiding him. But I still feel the coolness of his blade brush against my arm. It feels like a nice breeze and I almost forget what it actually is, what it could do to me.

Mark comes at me again, and I swish my blade through the air in front of me, until he knocks it aside with his own.

His blade slides right through my shoulder, as if I’m made of butter. The adrenaline keeps the pain at bay, but I’m sure it will hit me quite soon.

As he’s pulling his blade out of me I manage to jab mine into his side. Stabbing someone is such an unfamiliar sensation, that the gravity of it doesn’t register with me. Not even when he lets out a pained grunt and hits me in the side of the head with his fist.

We back away to opposite ends of the platform like magnets repelling each other. All the other trainees take a step back. Finally, my shoulder starts to sear, like embers of a fire have been rubbed on my skin. But the wound closes quickly and then we’re back at it.

A slash here. A punch there. A bruise. A bloodless scrape.

It doesn’t take long to tell that he’s far more skilled at combat than I am. And from the corner of my eye, I notice that the overseer looks suitably impressed. His arms are crossed, but he’s nodding at Mark with a sort of respect.

I don’t know why it makes me so angry, but it does.

I charge at Mark, using all my force to knock him over. We both go down in a tangle of limbs, and somewhere in that tangle, his blade pierces my heart.

I can’t exactly feel it _in_ my heart, but I can tell. You can tell that sort of thing.

Him pulling the blade out stings almost as bad as him shoving it in, and I roll over onto my back, gasping for air that won’t come.

Everyone in the room is silent. Mark stands up and brushes imaginary dust off of himself before holding out a hand to help me. But my stomach is still wide open and my lungs are still gasping so, as much as my pride wants me to get up, there is nothing I can do but lay there on the ground flailing like a fish out of water.

It feels like forever before I can sit up again.

In the corner of my vision I watch one of the younger trainees, who probably thought that this job would just be about stabbing monsters all day, walk over to the overseer and then exit the room.

It seems we have our first resignation.

Other than that, all the eyes in the room are on me, waiting to see what I will do. Because of this, I pretend to be out of breath for longer than I actually am so as to provide myself with ample time to consider my next course of action.

I could leave. I could back out of all this right now. No questions asked. No snickers given. And feeling my body stitch itself together, leaving seems like a damn good idea.

I climb clumsily to my feet, rejecting Mark’s offer to help.

My eyes glide over the room, meeting everyone else’s.

I really should leave, but my mouth seems to have a mind of it’s own because it says to Mark, “Do you wanna go another round?”

And we do.

And this time I drive the tip of the blade into his brain, feeling like a surgeon wielding a sword instead of a scalpel. It takes Mark twenty minutes to heal: five times as long as it took me.

I feel as though I’m soaring.


	8. Chapter 8

_Jared_

I’ve spent the last three hours trudging along the gate, picking at the burnt skin on my hand, and trying to find a guard that’s sympathetic-looking.

No such luck, so far. They all look like machines. Like Automatons moving back and forth. Patrolling the mile or so of the gate that they were assigned. Why anyone who’d been offered paradise would choose to spend it this way is beyond me.

I’m pretty far from civilization when I come across a guard who looks like a newbie. I can’t see his features but his movements are shaky as he tries to jab at a soul who has gotten too close. Not to mention that they almost always put the new guards in the less populated areas.

The soul looks pretty new to The After, he still has all of his skin and he’s dodging the guard’s jabs with the sort of energy that one loses after too much time in the Flames.

He’s teasing the guard, more than anything.

As I step closer I can make out the guard’s face. He has delicate features: green eyes and long lashes. I would think he was a girl, if not for his short-cropped blonde hair and his build.

He slashes again, and not only, does he miss the soul entirely, but he stumbles forward and when he reaches out a hand to steady himself, he grabs onto the gate.

I’d been wondering if the gate would burn souls from the Light as well as from the Flames.

I get my answer when blondie screeches and then stumbles backward, almost immediately looking around in embarrassment to see if anyone saw or heard him.

He also drops his sword.

On the wrong side of the gate.

And at that point, I’m almost ready to bolt. There aren’t many weapons in the Kingdom of Fire and most of the souls here are still in pretty bad shape. I’d hate to think what might happen if the wrong one of us got our hands on a sword and I definitely don’t want to stick around and find out.

But the guy on the other side of the fence looks so goddamn horrified at what’s just happened that I feel bad. I don’t know what happens to a guard if they lose their sword to a soul on the other side, but it can’t be good. And despite the danger involved, this is a damned good opportunity to get on a guards good side.

I inch closer, careful not to make a sound, and I pick up a rock that’s about the size of a fist, from the ground.

It burns my hands, but that isn’t anything new.

The moment the guard sees me his eyes lock on me and I try to signal with my facial expression to look somewhere else, so as not to draw attention, but he either isn’t getting it or doesn’t care because he keeps his eyes on me.

The soul turns around to see what the guard is staring at and I get him in the head mid-turn.

He doesn’t go down, like people do in movies.

It’s more like I’ve just poked the bear and when he slashes at me he gets me pretty good, drawing a thin red line across my stomach, ripping my shirt. But I manage to smash him again with the rock, and then again. I hit him so hard that I feel like an animal, and it makes me want to stop.

Finally he drops the sword and runs, looking back at me as though he’s afraid I’m chasing him. I don’t. I just stare at him as he fades into a speck on the blood-red horizon, letting everything that just happened soak into me.

The heat of the rock I’m holding is what comes back to me first, and I drop it instantly.

The next thing my senses snag on his the heavy breathing of the guard.

And that’s when I remember the sword.

I lean down and pick it up, not sure what it will feel like. When my hand wraps around it I almost drop it in shock. My heart starts pumping and I place the palm of my scorched hand on the blade.

It’s cool to the touch.

I laugh, giddy with joy. This is the first cool thing I have touched in over a year. And suddenly, I want to forget about my dumb little plan to get the gate opened and I want to hold onto this blade forever.

But I don’t.

It takes every ounce of self-control I have to walk over to that fence, and hold out the knife. The blade is in my hand so that the handle faces outward. I make sure not to get too close to the iron bars, for fear of my hand turning to dust. Ever so slowly, I stick the blade handle through the bars.

The guard looks at me uncertainly. It’s a good few seconds before he reaches up to take it back. He does so slowly, until his hand gets a grip on the handle, and then he yanks it back quickly, as though I might change my mind about returning it.

His green eyes are wide. His mouth slightly parted. He looks angelic, but most souls from the Light do. It’s just strange to see one so close up.

“Thank you,” he finally whispers, staring at me as though I’m something that he doesn’t believe in. The way one might stare, were they to come across a unicorn or a dragon.

I mean to say something thought provoking and intelligent, I really do. Something that he’ll think about later, when he’s eating or patrolling or lying down. I want to say something he’ll never forget. But all that comes out is, “You’re welcome.”

He flinches when I speak, as though he hadn’t been expecting it.

We stand there, staring, for quite a while.

Eventually, he must’ve left. He must’ve gone to continue his rounds. And I must’ve turned and trudged back to my fiery kingdom. These things must’ve happened. But I don’t remember them.

In my memories, neither of us moves from that spot. We stand there; so close we could touch, forever.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this one took so long.   
> I used to scoff when people would say things like, my muse wasn't cooperating. I thought it sounded pretentious and dumb, like, can't you just write something, anything, it isn't that hard to come up with an idea.  
> But I think I get it now. It isn't hard to come up with an idea, but it is hard to come up with an idea that I'm happy with, that I want to write, that I think I can write well, and that will get me where I need to go for this story.  
> So I apologize, but my ideas are taking a little longer than expected with this fic. I'll do my best to hurry them along.
> 
> Also, comment are love.

_Jensen_

I don’t see him again for four days—if they can count as days, without nights to interrupt them or divide them in any way.

His skin is red with sunburn and his lips are dry and cracked. He might have been handsome once, when he was alive. He’s tall and has soft-looking hair. But now he sort of looks like a dried up tomato, with brown rot laced throughout its skin like a bad rash that will never go away, unless he peels his skin off.

I flinch at how mean the thought is and then remind myself which side of the gate he’s on…and why. He might have done something nice for me a few days ago but that doesn’t mean he couldn’t be a pervert and / or an asshole. It doesn’t mean that he isn’t a racist or rapist.

It doesn’t mean that he isn’t the definition of guile. A big smile. Wide hazel eyes. He looks like he’d be good at guile.

He walks towards me when he sees me passing, waving like we’re at a high school reunion or a party or something.

After my shit-fest of a first day as a guard, I’m not exactly looking forward to any dealings with the citizens of the Kingdom of Fire so I keep walking and hope he gets the message.

He doesn’t.

“Hey! Don’t walk so fast. It’s hot over here on the Dark Side.” He catches up with me and then laughs like he’s told some sort of really great joke. I’d imagine him to be sweaty from all the heat, but his skin just looks dry and crackled.

 He persists even when I ignore him. “What’s up?” After a few more simple questions that receive no responses, or even glances, his face twists in anger and he stops walking, but I don’t, and when he speaks next he has to call out for me to hear him. “So what, now you’re too good to talk me?” I keep walking. “Well, fuck you. You weren’t too good for me yesterday when I had your precious fucking blade!”

He curses some more under his breath, before walking away.

And I, like the idiot I am, turn and chase after him. Because I’m angry. Because I _am_ too good to talk to him, and it’s bothering me that he’s treating me like I’m the one who deserves to go to hell. Ha!

“So what did you do,” I yell. He stops and turns toward me. The metal bars obscure his face. “Did you kill someone? Rape someone? Or were you just an all-around dickhead?”

If it was possible for him to get any redder, I think he would’ve.

I expect him to explode at me, perhaps start screaming obscenities, but he doesn’t. His next words are a whisper, barely audible, even though they’re being spoken through air that has no wind. “It was an accident.”

The words hit me like a slap and I have to remind myself that he deserves it.

_He does deserve it, doesn’t he?_

Still, I have to bite back the urge to call out for him. And the conversation plagues me all throughout dinner. It’s only five minutes into the meal that Misha asks me what’s wrong, sincerity scrawled across his perfect features.

“You made it seem like they were all monsters,” I say begrudgingly as I poke at my mashed potatoes.

“Who?”

“You know. This…” I gesture vaguely, but Misha seems to get the picture because he sighs comprehendingly and puts his silverware down. He wipes the red sauce off of his lips with a white, silk, napkin before he speaks. His voice is low and rumbly.

“You spoke to one of them, didn’t you?”

“It’s not against the rules to _speak_ to them.” I know I sound like a petulant child but I can’t seem to help it. I feel something unpleasant churning in my gut. It’s cold and slimy and it’s slithering through my intestines.

“Jensen, these people have done awful, _awfu_ l things. They’ve been put on that side of the fence for a reason—“

“By who? Who put them there!”

“Lower your voice.” The three words were hissed out like a snake had spoken them, and there was a serious glint in Misha’s almost insanely blue eyes that hadn’t been there ever before.

I sat there, stunned, staring at him like he’d just grown another head. It was like meeting a sweet, friendly golden retriever puppy and them watching it dig its fangs into your leg and tear away your flesh. You can’t even feel pain, or understand what just happened. There’s just…shock.

_Shock like there was the first time my father slapped my seven-year-old cheek._

“Jensen, I am going to say this and I am going to say it once. And keep in mind that this is for your own good.”

_I hated this feeling: like I was a child._

“You will never speak about the Kingdom of Fire or its inhabitants that way again, do you understand?”

 _The same child that never hung up his clothes so that he could bury himself under them when he had to hide from his father_.

“You will refer to the damned as what they are: damned. Sentenced to an eternity in hell, and for a good reason.”

_That same child who used to make it a game when his father slid off his belt and slapped it down hard across my freckled back: I would guess, an even number or an odd number of lashes this time._

“Yes, I made it seem like they were all monsters. But that was because they _are_ all monsters. Don’t ever forget that. Don’t ever forget what they are.”

It takes everything I have to bite back the words that are climbing up my throat. The words that feel as though they’ll choke me if I don’t let them out.

Six words. Eight syllables. One sentence.

_I’m not the one who’s forgotten._


	10. Chapter 10

_Jared_

For the past few days I’ve stayed near the fence—souls are unable to sleep, but we still get tired and we still net to rest—but now that Sargent Dickhead’s made it clear he doesn’t want anything to do with me I’m heading home.

Home sweet fucking home.

The scorched castle seems to grow bigger the closer I get to it. If I look at it the right way, in the right light, it looks like a crumbled face twisted into a snarl.

My eyes travel upward to where my room—if you can call it that—is located. I see Colin’s shaggy head poke out of the window and I raise my hand to wave at him. His face splits into a grin and I see him bounce just a little with excitement. It’s going to be difficult telling him that the entire trip was a waste of time, but at least I got a damn good story out of it.

I step forward and I hear a crunch and then a groan. Stumbling back, my eyes dart toward the ground and I see that I’ve accidentally stepped on someone who’d tried to bury himself in the sand for shade.

“Sorry,” I say. He just flips me off before piling sand back on top of himself. Not that I can really blame him for being brusque. Judging by the crunch I heard, I’ve broken something of his.

“Alright then,” I mutter, as I walk around him. Colin is laughing at me from his perch on the window.

“This him?”

The voice that asks is gruff and gravelly and its only after I turn around to face its owner that I realize it wasn’t directed at me. It was directed at-

The soul that I fought for the sword with less than a week ago is standing right in front of me, his beady eyes narrowed. Next to him is the man who asked the question—which may not have been directed at me, but was definitely referencing me.

Beady-eyes nods, crossing his arms. Even from here I can smell the foul stench of his breath. He doesn’t appear to have been in hell very long, so I can assume he didn’t brush his teeth very much when he was alive. “Yep. That’s the bastard who stole my sword.”

“That true?” The older man asks me.

I put my hands up and begin to move slowly backwards. “Whoa. Steal is a harsh word. It was more like…permanent borrowing.”

“Permanent borrowing my ass,” the soul I fought with snarls as he lunges toward me. I duck out of the way fairly easily. The guy is about my size, but a bit less agile.

“Look, fellas, this is hell. It doesn’t matter if someone grabs something right out of your hand—you should’ve had a tighter grip.”

It’s the last word I get out before he hits me. I hear Colin cry out from above and I mean to tell him that it’s okay, but my vision isn’t quite working right. A second hit make it even worse.

In between the strikes, the soul speaks, “You son of…A bitch, I…Want my…Goddamn…Sword back.”

“Don’t have it,” I croak, feeling one of my teeth come loose. Damn, I’d been going pretty well on the whole keeping-my-teeth front. Better than the guy beating me up, anyway.

Finally he stops hitting me. The only thing still holding me up is his grip on my collar, and when he lets go I crumple. My mouth is open when I hit the ground and sand scrapes at my gums, and it burns the whole that my tooth left behind.

I’m just getting my bearings back when he kicks me in the stomach. “Where the fuck is it, then?” Each word punctuated with a kick, except the last one. And I open my eyes long enough to see Colin barrel into the man.

He’s so small that it looks almost comical: A shaggy mass of brown hair tackling a grown man. But it isn’t funny at all when the man who beat me strikes Colin in the face. His nose breaks with a sickening crunch.

He wraps his hands around Colin’s throat and repeats the same question he just asked me.

“Mark, maybe this has gone too far,” the other man tries to pacify, but Mark seems to have missed the words or ignored them.

Finally, I spit dry sand out of my mouth and onto the ground, before pulling myself up to a sitting position. “I gave it back,” I call, though the words are barely intelligible.

Finally, Mark’s eyes move away from Collin. “Gave it back? Back to who? Clearly not to me.”

“The guard.”

“The one I stole it from?” His words were quaking and had I any saliva in my mouth I would’ve gulped. Instead I simply nodded and tried not to look at Collin, who was making those awful keening noises he made the first day that he landed here. “We had a _sword_ and you gave it back to the Light! It was cold for Christ sakes.”

He tosses Collin to the side and strides toward me. I haul myself up, but I’m too late and he kicks me in the chin, making my entire skull clatter. A cluster of people has started to watch, trading whispers back and forth. Some look curious. Some look angry. Some look downright murderous.

I look up at Mark, expecting him to keep kicking me, but instead he walks around me and shoves his arms under my armpits, lifting me up. His friend grabs my feet. I kick out, but it does no good. Other souls are getting the idea and joining in.

“What the hell are you doing,” I gasp breathlessly.

The smile he gives me is missing more teeth than it has and I feel something close to cold.

“You wanna make friends with the good citizens of the Kingdom of Light so badly, I figure you can join them?”

A resounding cheer of agreement ripples through the people watching, as more and more begin to grab hold of me and pull me toward the fence.


	11. Chapter 11

_Jensen_

I began walking to the fence rather than traveling by horseback when I noticed that I never did get tired or run out of energy, and it was a very beautiful walk. Some of the other guards still toss me strange looks as they ride by on their white stallions—the sort of looks they toss women with scars on their faces or elderly men. Like, _What the hell are you thinking? Why on earth would you want to spend eternity looking like / acting like / smelling like / doing_ that _?_

I’m only about five minutes away from the fence when someone dashes past me. It’s a woman, definitely. She has long, chocolate–brown hair that swishes behind her when she runs and thin, pale arms and legs that move with the grace of a dancer.

But that’s not the interesting part. The interesting part is when I hear Kurt Fuller’s voice ring out from behind me, “Stop her!”

I turn back to look at him, he’s running at what is probably top speed for him, but he’s at least a minute behind the woman. He’s never going to catch her, not when they’ve both got an unlimited energy supply.

So I turn to chase after her.

She reaches the fence about twenty seconds before I do and she begins to pull at the bars, which, _damn_. Take it from someone who knows—those things burn. The pain of which doesn’t seem to deter the woman in the slightest. I almost feel bad. I almost tell her it’s no use—that only guards and certain people that are very high up on the totem pole have keys to the fence. And then it hits me:

_She wants to get through?_

I’m baffled by the idea, even as I rip her away from the iron bars. It’s one of the rules I was taught when I trained to be a guard. The only people allowed into the Kingdom of Fire are the one’s that the guards banish there.

“Let me through!” The woman screams. Kurt is nearing us, with three other guards flanking him.

“Why?” I ask.

“My son—he’s over there.” Her eyes are the same brown color as her hair, and they are overflowing with tears. “But he doesn’t deserve to be. He doesn’t. He’s just a child. You don’t understand.”

            Her last sentence sounds like the most truthful thing anyone’s said to me since I arrived.

            When Fuller and the other guards reach us, they yank her away and begin dragging her off to somewhere. Then, Fuller pats me on the shoulder. “Good work,” he tells me, before making to walk away.

            Before he can leave, I call out, “Who is she?”

            I can‘t see Kurt Fuller’s face but I can see his shoulders tense. When he turns to face me his expression is friendly, but it feels more like he’s wearing a clown mask than actually smiling at me.

“Her name is Lana Ford. She’s been here for a few months and she hasn’t yet found her son. She’s convinced that he’s somewhere in the Kingdom of Fire. I keep trying to tell her that the Light is infinite and she may’ve just not found him yet, but she doesn’t listen.”

Again, he turns to leave.

Again, I call him back.

“Shouldn’t it be her choice, though? If she wants to leave the light, shouldn’t she be able to?”

This time Fuller doesn’t even pretend to smile. “Misha told me you were asking a lot of questions. Wondering about the rules and such. A lot of souls do, especially new ones, it isn’t uncommon. But you’ve been asking quite a bit about the Kingdom of Fire.”

Of course Misha told him. I imagine the blue eyes man standing in front of Fuller’s desk like a good little teacher’s pet and telling him all about me. The man likes to act righteous while doing whatever it takes to get a gold star.

“Is that a bad thing? Asking questions?”

“Not necessarily,” Fuller shrugs, “Just remember what curiosity did to the cat.”

“I hate cats.”

He laughs before turning away for a third time. This time, I let him go. And from a distance I watch the guards still dragging the struggling woman and I wonder where they’ll take her. Are there prisons in the Kingdom of Light? If there are, they certainly weren’t on the brochure.

I sigh and turn back to the fence. The other side of it is mostly barren, except for a couple of skeletal souls that mostly mind their own business. I’m about to make my way over to my section of the fence and relieve whoever’s been filling in for me, when I see something on the horizon.

A very large speck moving closer and closer at a speed that’s faster than I’ve ever seen anyone in the Flames move. It’s either a tornado or a mob of damned souls. And both would be pretty damn bad.

“Hey,” I call to the nearest guard, “Do you see that?” The man follows my gaze and I can sense the moment that he spots it. His eyes widen and his mouth parts slightly.

By the rate the speck is moving it will be here within the hour. So I run toward one of the horses and climb on top.

“Where the hell are you going?” The guard asks.

“Back to base. If those are souls than there look to be at least thirty of them. I’m getting the bows and arrows and bringing back reinforcements.”

“They’re in the Kingdom of Fire, what the hell are they gonna do? Throw sand at us?”

And what the guard is saying makes perfect sense. There’s nothing they can really do to hurt us, is there? Logically, I know that we’re safe. But there’s something slithering up my spin and into my ear that’s whispering otherwise.

“I don’t know what they can do,” I admit, “But I don’t intend to find out. Remember what curiosity did to that cat.” With that, I dig my heels gently into the horse’s side and we take off.


End file.
